Book Review: “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
The Vampires of Eastern Europe
I grew up between 1979 and 1982 in a small hamlet in eastern Ontario, Canada, called Wilno. The burg is known for two things nationally and internationally. First, it is home to Canada’s first Polish settlement. Second, it is a haven for vampires. I’m not kidding! While most residents of Wilno would be angry with me for even bringing this up, as it is something they’re kind of ashamed of, this “fact” is germane to my discussion of the ultimate vampire novel, Dracula — it was originally published in 1897 but has been repackaged for rerelease in 2023 by Restless Books. You see, word got out about Wilno’s vampires after an American researcher came to the hamlet in the late 1960s/early ’70s and found 15 “informants” who were willing to go on record about the existence of vampires among them. There was a method to their madness if I could put it that way. You see, during this period, Wilno was receiving a flux of American immigrants dodging the Vietnam War draft. These so-called “hippies” were getting under the skin of the Polish, and so the Polish conspired to get rid of them by telling a story culled from Polish heritage and tradition. My belief is, that by telling these tales about vampires in Wilno, the Polish residents hoped to scare away American immigrants who were settling on the land. It didn’t work. Instead, after this researcher published his report, Wilno kind of became a laughing stock: now and then, reporters from the likes of the National Enquirer make their way to the community hoping to find a real-life vampire in the flesh. Again, I’m not kidding!
The same sort of thing is going on in Dracula, I figure. I know from my Canadian history courses that, at the time this novel was published, Canada was attracting settlers to the Prairies — but it had a preferred list of those it wanted to settle the land. The preference was for English-speaking immigrants of Western European stock. Eastern Europeans were further down the list. Well, Transylvania is fictitiously located somewhere in Eastern Europe. Thus, I must wonder if Stoker and his fellow Britons had similar prejudices to those from the further-flung corners of the continent as the Canadian government did. If so, Dracula could be said to be a novel about xenophobia. However, Dracula — a novel told as a series of letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles — is one of those books where 16 different people could read it and come away with 16 different things to say about it. It’s a novel about the fear of the Other (women), and it’s a book about class differences. Essentially, I try to write 1,000-word reviews in this space on Medium, and in some ways, that word limit doesn’t seem to suffice. There’s lots to talk about here.
I do want to say a word about the repackaged Dracula for 2023 audiences. Restless Books has done a good job with its introduction to the book (which offers few spoilers) and the illustrations that grace it (though the characters look a little too modern to my eye). My only complaint — and I’m hesitant to bring this up, for it is bad form to talk about pre-release galleys that have no bearing on the published version — is that my electronic pre-release copy was full of missing letters and numbers in some sections of the text. However, this is worth mentioning because — even with this defect in the text I was reading — Stoker’s brilliant prose still found a way to shine through. The book is particularly interesting as a fin de siècle modern text that is relevant to the year 2023 in the description of novel and new types of technology that were in use at the time: telegraph machines, typewriters, and phonographic records all play a part in advancing the story. If a book like this were written today, there would probably be references to all sorts of social media, I’d imagine. Thus, there are parallels between the century that separates the book’s original publication and now that can be drawn.
You will note that I haven’t even gotten around to giving a thumbnail sketch of the plot. This is a book that doesn’t need it. It’s so famous, though its imitators and various movie versions, that most of this is common knowledge. However, if one has forgotten what the book is about, just dive in and read it. Even though this novel isn’t perfect — too much dialogue is used as monologued exposition — it is also paradoxically a perfect, five-star, 10 out of 10 book. That’s owing to the fact of how often this novel has set the standard for the toothless vampire novels and films that followed. I also find it interesting that Bram Stoker is known as much of a mystery writer as he is a horror writer. Reading Dracula bears out why this is. It works as both a thrilling “find the Count before he does more harm” novel and a straight-up chilling slice of horrific violence. (The dead man steering a ship bit is particularly spine-tingling.) Overall, Dracula is a stone-cold classic — no matter the genre — and deserves to be read at any time of the year, not just at Halloween. Is it a racist book? It might be. But does it condone that racism? Maybe, maybe not. No matter how you slice it though, while Dracula may be problematic, it reflects both the time it was written and the time that is now. This is a scrumptious slice of horror and crime fiction, and I give fangs for getting a copy of this from the publisher. This is a novel that hasn’t lost any of its bite in the years since it was published. I’m wondering if anyone from one of my hometowns would enjoy it as much, though!
Bram Stoker’s Dracula will be republished by Restless Books on October 3, 2023.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
